Maybe this caught my eye because I spent a lot of time on a 10-year-old’s computer last week complete with Neopets screensaver and cursor. (She kindly changed the cursor when I admitted it was driving me bats.) Jonathan Bing’s aptly describes Viacom’s Neopets as “kind of like My Space for 11-year-olds, but with more corporate branding than Saturday morning network TV.” He zeroes in on the site’s use as a consumer research tool, pulling in users of all ages for myriad daily surveys. One example: a recent survey of 3,820 Neopians turned up a majority that prefers movies and DVDs to be available simultaneously. In fact, Bing concludes, ‘the real value of a site like Neopets—or for that matter, iVillage, which was bought last week by NBC Universal for $600 million—may be the backdoor access it offers its corporate parents to the elusive tastes and preferences of its users.”